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and was told that Anzén wasn't mentioned in the criminal register in court records. Through the names of others who were prosecuted at the same time as Anzén, a civil servant eventually found the documents in the auxiliary section for classified espionage cases. Did I want the archive office to scan them? It would cost four
Swedish kronor â around forty US cents â per page. The material, I was told, covered roughly a thousand pages. I decided I could wait.
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Malmö City
Archives. As I sat down in front of the archive's computer, ten months had passed since I started digging. It took me a little while to skim through all the photographed pages to find the right case, but there, in the margin, I found it: April 14, 1912. The birth date of the Nazi was the same as that of the artist. Sweet victory. The protocol from June 23, 1945, also mentioned that Anzén had received a scholarship to study painting.
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845:: Yes, one owns the physical work of art, but the copyright completely is separate from the artefact, keeping us from uploading photos to Commons. Unless it has been contractually transferred, it remains with the creator â or his descendants for 70 years after his death. Which might be a tad tricky to calculate in this case, but while we can fairly safely assume he's dead, we
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owner of the painting told me that Anzén lived in KnÀbÀck in the the 1950s and was hit by depression when the village had to be moved. He painted only "black paintings", and it was that disappointment that would have driven him to Spain. But he couldn't say anything about a year of death, nor about any
National Socialist tendencies (or lack thereof).
277:") from 2000, now freely available as a PDF. Here, a Bertil AnzĂ©n is mentioned as an agent in the Svenska socialistiska partiet, but without any more details. I emailed Blomqvist to ask if he possibly knew more about AnzĂ©n. He didn't, he replied, but perhaps Tobias HĂŒbinette would know. So I tried that, but HĂŒbinette didn't know either.
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I went back to
Blomqvist's work and read the footnotes. Suddenly, it struck me: Anzén had been prosecuted. There was a reference to the material from a trial, sure to be available at the Stockholm City Archives. With biographical details therein! I emailed the archives, but didn't have a case number,
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Eric Luth tried to email the
Swedish Museum of Modern Art. They didn't know and couldn't do any further research. I contacted the Maglehems kulturförening ("Maglehem Cultural Association" in the village of Maglehem), which had had a painting by Anzén as part of an exhibition as recently as 2014. The
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going on, and I felt like getting vaccinated before I got on a train to head north. Come autumn, I had other errands in the vicinity of
Stockholm, and requested the documents to be retrieved â only to be told that they had been digitized and made accessible where they could now be accessed from the
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In
February 2021, I biked to pick up a couple of other pieces from the auction house. Two normal-sized paintings: a bit unstable on the bike, but it works. I pedaled the five kilometers to the auction house, gave them my customer number, and received my five works of art, three of which the system
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I still don't know when AnzĂ©n died. But so, about a year after I started looking, I had created a reference and could â Swedish
Knowledge (XXG) allows you to refer to your own work, provided that it has been published in a reliable source â add a couple of short sentences to the Knowledge (XXG)
514:: Thanks! No, I'd argue this is in line with Swedish Knowledge (XXG) norms (which are less strict than English Knowledge (XXG) in some circumstances, as long as the material has been published but a reliable source), and no one has complained so far. (:
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It's a question one so rarely gets about the paintings in one's kitchen. Knowledge (XXG) didn't have much to tell â his parents, his wife, his apprenticeship. He painted portraits, cityscapes, and landscape paintings with motifs from eastern
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Really interesting story. Good to hear there's significant progress but I hope you will continue to search for his place and date of death. Eric Luth is obviously ubiquitous. Maybe one of these days we'll be able to read about
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party in the 1940s â that's enough to be relevant for a somewhat-public figure, regardless of whether they were prosecuted for those activities. And I couldn't find any signs of there having been two Bertil Ragnar AnzĂ©ns.
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258:, as well as drawings done in red chalk and charcoal, the Swedish biography said. A year of death was missing, even though he was presumed to be deceased. But how many Bertil Ragnar Anzéns could there be?
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229:. Over time, he was forgotten. Three of his paintings had been offered at an auction, clumped together. By being willing to part with 75 SEK â roughly 7 USD â I had ended up with the winning bid.
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292:("Hitler's Swedish Vanguards") by Armas Sastamoinen. Once again, AnzĂ©n was important enough to appear â but not important enough for anyone to have written anything substantial about him.
828:: Even when you own the paintings? When is the earliest they can be uploaded? I assume it is some x years after the painter died, which is a bit tricky if you don't know his death-date?
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Eric Luth, who had instigated the entire thing by asking an innocent question, happened to be not only a fellow
Swedish Wikipedian, but also the cultural editor of the Swedish magazine
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are the picures by him, sold on auctionet.com. Could you scan your pictures, to illustrate the article? (I am not familiar with
Swedish copyrights, is it allowed?)
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299:, a Swedish biographical lexicon published from 1912 to 2007, stated in 1967 that Anzén was at the time residing in Målaga, Spain. After 1981, he disappeared from
811:: Thanks! No, his paintings are still covered by copyright, unfortunately, or I'd have illustrated this article with a photo of the paintings in my kitchen. /
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Thousands of dollars, yes, for a few sentences about a forgotten painter. This isn't the kind of thing one can do if anyone is to get paid. /
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240:"Is this the same Bertil Ragnar Anzén as the Nazi?" asked my friend Eric Luth, who had found a very short news item in the archives of the
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Based on this experience, I'm tempted to believe it's typically for the better if one doesn't have to go hunting for primary sources. (: /
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I decide to try to update the Swedish Knowledge (XXG) article: year of death and possible Nazism. He was employed by a
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with five paintings on two wheels. I wrote a short social media status update about my adventures to amuse my friends.
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it was less than 70 years ago. So: When will it expire? Not certain. Is there a chance it already has expired? No. /
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Thank you! And yes, I do enjoy the red links in the article, visual reminders of more work we still have to do. /
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and Knowledge (XXG)-writing. Kudos! PS. I can't see the link to the article you published in your piece above? --
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288:("The Swastika and the Wasa Sheaf: A Study of National Socialism in Sweden 1924â1950") by HelĂ©ne Lööw, and
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to the article â this Signpost text is partly a translation, but edited and with a different conclusion. /
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We can't write about the things we can't reference. But we can't let such insignificant details stop us.
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newspaper â the AnzĂ©n who in 1945 was prosecuted for illegal intelligence activities, as an agent for
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had not yet indicated as delivered when I left home. That's how I ended up wobbling home through
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publishing on Knowledge (XXG). IMHO you are following best practices when it comes to combining
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Hmmm? How so? I mean, it is time consuming and can be costly too... is this what you mean?
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Having, at last, found conclusive proof, I needed to do something with it: publish.
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I love a research story like this. Beautiful work, and thank you for sharing it in
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Is this guy the same as the one who was a Nazi?: The hunt for Bertil Ragnar Anzén.
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284:("The Swedish Nazism 1924â1979. The Pioneers, the Parties, the Propaganda") and
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But you also got a non-wiki publication credit out of it. Silver lining too :)
595:: And it took me a year to get to the point where I could update the article! /
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Hakkorset och WasakĂ€rven: en studie av nationalsocialismen i Sverige 1924â1950
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Btw, your story reminds me a bit of my own recent research and conclusion at
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Imagine how much it would have cost to hire someone to do this for you.
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File:Arthur_Szyk_(1894-1951)._Satan_Leads_the_Ball_(1942),_New_York.jpg
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I started reading through books about Swedish Nazism in the 1940s:
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Nazismen i Sverige 1924â1979. PionjĂ€rerna, partierna, propagandan
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Really great one, thanks. Unfortunately sounds very familiar.--
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At the same time, I tried to figure out when he actually died.
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in the 1960s didn't exactly contradict a Nazi background.
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didn't reply. Still, I was encouraged: a Swede moving to
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in 1938. He sold his paintings. They can be found at the
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was born in 1912. He studied art and was part of the
474:If your comment has not appeared here, you can try
269:Among the search results I found HĂ„kan Blomqvist's
538:Talk:CzesĆaw_Lewicki#Righteous_who_saved_Szpilman?
91:Is this guy the same as the one who was a Nazi?
250:, one of the Swedish Nazi parties at the time?
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485:Nice. I hope nobody gives you grief about
958:Knowledge (XXG) Signpost archives 2024-02
902:Make sure we cover what matters to you â
789:Fun story! Thanks for your work, Julle.
18:Knowledge (XXG):Knowledge (XXG) Signpost
477:
453:
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612:Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus
578:Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus
543:Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus
496:Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus
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211:Swedish National Museum of Fine Arts
275:The Enigma of Nils Flyg and Nazism
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459:These comments are automatically
759:hook at the top of the article!
326:It took a few months. There was
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641:as well. It's inspirational! ~
470:add the page to your watchlist
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248:Svenska socialistiska partiet
271:GĂ„tan Nils Flyg och nazismen
215:Swedish Museum of Modern Art
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290:Hitlers svenska förtrupper
227:Uppsala University Library
467:. To follow comments,
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681:Bertil Anzén
660:Thank you! /
639:The Signpost
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